Major was born March 29, 1943, the son of Tom Major-Ball, a travelling showman. He was christened 'John Roy Major' but only the name John is shown on his birth certificate. He used the middle name Roy until the early 1980s.

Although born in the wealthy Worcester Park area of Sutton, Major grew up in the much poorer Brixton where the family were forced to move after the failure of his father's business. He had an undistinguished education at Rutlish Grammar School and left school at 16. He applied to become a bus conductor, but his application was rejected, allegedly because of poor arithmetic. His first job was as a clerk in an insurance broking firm in 1959, and, for a time, he worked manufacturing gnomes with his brother, Terry Major-Ball. He eventually went to work as an executive at Standard Chartered Bank in May 1965 where he rose quickly through the ranks, before leaving on his election to Parliament in 1979. He is an Associate of the Institute of Bankers.

He married Norma Johnson on October 3, 1970. They have a son (James Major) and a daughter (Elizabeth Major).

When Michael Heseltine's challenge to Margaret Thatcher's leadership of the Conservative Party forced the contest to a second round and Thatcher withdrew, John Major entered the contest alongside Douglas Hurd. Though he fell two votes short of the required winning margin of 187 votes in the second ballot, Major's result was sufficient to secure immediate concessions from his rivals and he became prime minister on November 27, 1990.

Major was prime minister during the Gulf War. During the first years in office, the world economy slid into recession after the long boom during the 1980s. Expected to lose the 1992 election to Neil Kinnock, Major took his campaign onto the streets, famously delivering many addresses from an upturned soapbox as in his Lambeth days. This populist "common touch", in contrast to the Labour Party's more slick campaign, chimed with the electorate and Major won an unexpected second term in office, albeit with a small parliamentary majority. This proved to be unmanageable, particularly after Britain's forced exit from the ERM on Black Wednesday (September 16,1992) just five months into his new term.

Despite Major's best efforts, the Conservative party collapsed into political infighting. Major took a moderate approach but found himself undermined by the right-wing within the party and the Cabinet. In particular, his policy towards the European Union aroused opposition as the Government attempted to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. Although the Labour opposition supported the treaty, they were prepared to undertake tactical moves to weaken the government, which included passing an amendment which required a vote on the social chapter aspects of the treaty before it could be ratified. Several Conservative MPs voted against the Government and the vote was lost. Major hit back by calling another vote on the following day (July 23, 1993), which he declared a vote of confidence (in other words, that he would resign if defeated). He won by 40 but had damaged his authority.

Later that day, Major gave an interview to ITN's Michael Brunson. During an unguarded moment when he thought that the microphones had been switched off, Brunson asked why he did not sack the Ministers who were conspiring against him. He replied "We don't want another three more of the bastards out there. What's Lyndon Johnson's maxim?..." Major later claimed that he had picked the number three from the air, but many journalists immediately named the three as Peter Lilley, Michael Portillo and Michael Howard, who were three of the more prominent "Eurosceptics". The tape of this conversation was leaked to the Daily Mirror and widely reported, embarrassing Major. (The maxim referred to is Johnson's comment of J. Edgar Hoover, that it would be better to have him 'in the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in').

At the 1993 Conservative Party Conference, Major began the "Back to Basics" campaign, which he intended to be about the economy, education, policing, and other such issues. However, it was interpreted by many (including Conservative cabinet ministers) as being about personal morality. As a result, it disastrously back-fired on him by providing an excuse for the British media to expose "sleaze" within the Conservative Party and, most damagingly, within the Cabinet itself.

In 1995, tired at continual threats of leadership challenges that never arose, he resigned as leader of the Conservative Party, and announced he would be contesting the election. John Redwood, the Secretary of State for Wales stood against him. Major won by 218 votes to Redwood's 89 (with 8 abstentions and 12 spoiled ballots)—easily enough to win in the first round, but only 3 more than the target he had privately set himself.

His re-election failed to restore his authority. By December 1996, the Conservatives had lost their majority in the House of Commons. Major managed to survive to the end of the Parliament, but was forced to call an election in March 1997 as the five-year term approached its end.

Owing to the fact that he grew up in Brixton, the so-called "capital of the Jamaican community in London", he was regularly joked about as being Ranking John Major by Curtis Walker and Ishmael Thomas, the hosts of an early 1990sBBC comedy programme called Paramount City [1].
Later he would also be depicted as Johnny Reggae by the cast of
The Real McCoy [1].